


A Poisoned Mind

by Vanyela



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Angst, Companion Piece to Season 3 Episodes and 7, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 12:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17001678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanyela/pseuds/Vanyela
Summary: A look into Girolamo's mind as he fights the conditioning of the sinister Labyrinth with the help of Leonardo da Vinci after his discovery of the Monster of Italy.





	A Poisoned Mind

_Girolamo sees fire and brimstone. A poor demonic caricature of the artista with pointed teeth and a grotesque brow haunts him. Sharp objects pierce his skin and his eyes burn as not-Leonardo laughs at him. Taunts him with his horrifying smile and Girolamo screams. His eyes bleed and his skin blisters and Girolamo is truly, wholly, and unequivocally afraid._

 

He wakes, bound in chains and sore all over. It feels as though he’s taken a dip in the river but never completely dried off. His limbs feel leaden, his clothing is soaked through, and his mind is fogged. He is unsure where he is or how he came to this place, but knows only that wherever he is, he is safe.

 

He gasps. Shifts himself to face the light and kicks out with his feet. He is bound at the wrists and around the waist with shackles of iron and the artista stands before him. The artista - his artista - has drugged him. Kept him in that foggy state of ‘not quite aware’ and Girolamo is hurt for a moment. He thought he’d proved his worth, his talent, his use to Leonardo in the New World. He thought perhaps they had become allies if not friends.

 

Then he awoke bound and addled by da Vinci’s hand for some… unknown purpose.

 

He is not himself. He knows this, can feel it in his very soul. There is something terribly wrong with him, with his mind, with his body and it goes beyond the inventor’s clever tricks. It goes so deep Girolamo fears he will sink into it and never return should he try to explore it.

 

This feeling - this deep, knowing sense - is confirmed when Leonardo tells him of his transgressions. Of the atrocities he has committed in the name of God, in the name of the Pope, and in the name of Christendom. The horror spreads. He chokes on his breath, fights not to swallow his tongue as the panic crests. He is a pious man, a righteous man, and the Commandments instruct followers of Christ not to kill. How then can he claim to be a Son of Christ, a servant of the Lord if he would do such horrible things? Such selfish things?

 

He sees them. His victims. The sinners whose God should have judged them as it was not Girolamo’s place to act on His behalf. The blood. The viscera. 

 

Bile rises in the back of his throat and for one whole minute, Girolamo wishes he had succeeded in his mission that night in the river. That his wrists had opened up and released the flood of his life force, never to be returned to his body again. 

 

He cannot be saved.

 

God would not waste his divine power on one so sullied as Girolamo, of that much the Count is certain.

 

But still, da Vinci insists. He is a man of many talents, a mad genius of famed reputation. He believes beyond all hope that he can save Girolamo and his soul.

 

Girolamo does not allow himself something so foolish as to hope. He does not deserve it. He cannot pray for something so self-serving after all he’s done. He is in no position to argue the point, however. Once Leonardo gets something in his head, it happens one way or the other. That was how they’d all ended up meeting on the shores of the savage New World. Fate seemed to have a particularly soft spot for the da Vinci family.

 

So he sits. He waits. He has nightmares when waking and nightmares when sleeping and somehow neither one is as sinister as his own reality. He forgets spans of time. Spans in which he can only assume he is no longer in control of his rightful mind. Spans in which he fears he has done or said something terrible.

 

During one of these spans, he feels a pinch. Like a bee sting but greater. His mind floats - not quite to the surface but closer than he was before. His body sags. It is feverishly hot in this Hell he’s created for himself. Then, it is ice cold. Girolamo feels as though he is being flayed alive, and that he is feeling nothing at all in equal measure.

 

He hopes Leonardo has poisoned him. He hopes the artista had the courage to do what he could not succeed at himself. It is what he would do.

 

The next time he wakes, he is in pain. It is dizzying as he gasps himself to wakefulness, shivering through the sweat on his brow. He is no longer sure if sleeping is the right word for what happens to him when he returns to consciousness. He is no longer sure if the reality he faces will be the same when next he opens his eyes.

 

A horse has danced across his body, he is sure of it as he pushes himself upright against the pulley system connected to his chains. His bones ache and his skin prickles with needle-point fineness at every point of contact. His nightmares are less painful than the treatment being administered but the pain is his penance. It is deserved and earned as a punishment and if da Vinci wishes to take God’s will into his hands, so be it. It is a fitting end to the Monster of Italy.

 

It is not to be. He does his best to tell the maestro that there is no hope. The mission is as fruitless as their quest to the New World. Girolamo Riario cannot be saved… but his death can serve a purpose. A cautionary tale for what happens when one worships false idols. When one strays too far from His divine plan. What will happen if the Crusade does not march ever onward.

 

Da Vinci will not let him die.

 

His antidote keeps Girolamo sedate and in a constant state of waking nightmare. He had explained once, in a period of rare lucidity, how the antidote made him feel. What his body was doing in response. Leonardo took care to write everything down after it was explained that he had, in fact, used poison in the cure.

 

The doses come less and less frequently as his condition improves. The nightmares are replaced only with the true memories of the atrocities he has committed. 

 

He wakes one morning to find Leonardo examining him. Scrutinizing his face, his body, his every move. The shackles are released and Girolamo does not trust himself to face the world safely. To carry on as if nothing has happened. It will be impossible, he knows. But for Leonardo’s sake - Leonardo who stayed with him day and night and worked tirelessly to cure him - he will pretend for a time.

 

His wrists are raw from the irons. He has not bathed in weeks. He is thin and ragged from a lack of food. (Not due to Leo’s hospitality - no, the antidote made eating nigh impossible.) He is in pain but for the first time in some time, it is not a physical pain.

 

Leonardo trusts him and tells him to trust himself.

 

Girolamo knows he cannot.

 

But he is alive and his life is now owed to Leonardo, so it is… a start.


End file.
